Matthew T. Mullarkey

Entering Action Design Research

In the execution of an Action Design Research ADR project, we experienced challenges in how to enter into the ADR research stages effectively. In this paper, we present how we addressed these challenges by extending the ADR model with two expanded up-front activities and multiple entry points. Our research on inter-organizational social networks is briefly described as the project context for application of the extended ADR model.

Taking a Case Method Capstone Course Online: A Comparative Case Study

A capstone course is normally offered at the end of a program of study with the goal of helping students synthesize what they have learned in the courses preceding it. The paper describes such a course—an undergraduate capstone course for MIS majors—that was built around case discussions and projects and originally offered in a face-to-face format. Over the course of the study, an asynchronous online version of the course was developed that was intended to be as faithful as possible to the classroom version. The paper examines the design, delivery, and learning outcomes of the online offering, contrasting it with the classroom version. The transition to an online course required many adaptations. Among the issues that we needed address are the following: 1) moving the highly synchronous face-to-face discussions of each case study to an asynchronous format without losing fidelity and energy, 2) changing how “student participation” was defined and evaluated, 3) adapting the project component of the course— which ended with a very popular “science fair” activity at the end of the semester in the classroom version—to a delivery mechanism where students never interacted with each other face-toface, and 4) evaluating the relative learning outcomes of the two approaches. The results of the conversion proved to be consistent with some of our expectations and surprising in other ways. Consistent with expectations, the online tools that we employed allowed us to create an online design that was relatively faithful to the original version in terms of meeting learning objectives. Also consistent with our expectations, student perceptions of the course— while quite positive overall—were more mixed for the online course than for its face-to-face predecessor. The course offering produced two surprises, however. First, the online approach to the project component of the course actually seemed to result in higher quality project presentations than the face-to-face version. Second, when results were compared from the instrument we used to evaluate student learning gains, the classroom and online versions of the class proved to be nearly indistinguishable. Given the very different delivery mechanisms employed, we had anticipated far more differences in student perceptions of what they had learned over the course of the semester. Given the challenges of taking a highly interactive class online, we viewed this surprise to be a very pleasant one.

Capturing User Generated Video Content in Online Social Networks

We build and evaluate an innovative artifact for the investigation of social content derived-platforms specifically to gain a unique understanding of the content shared and underlying behaviors of the contributors to these technology platforms. The artifact‘s innovation is derived from the solution’s unique approach to converting and analyzing the multimedia – especially video - content to gain interesting insights into the social network connectivity of the actors on a given technology platform. The artifact directly addresses a practical need for industry practitioners to analyze social video network content using a rigorous and evidence-based DSR approach.

Technical debt-related information asymmetry between finance and IT

This position paper proposes a new stream of research targeted at technical debt as a source of information asymmetry between finance and IT professionals involved in information technology investment decisions. Finance teams interact with technology teams in several ways, predominantly when business cases require review and during the annual budgeting process. During these discrete interactions, finance teams are required to digest large amounts of technical strategy and architectural information chockfull of technical terminology and diagrams. Typically, the estimates for effort are soft and risk is difficult to measure. It is within this context that finance approves budgets and projects that inevitably result in the accumulation of technical debt. This paper discusses some of the dynamics at work between finance and IT teams within large complex organizations when they meet to make technology investment decisions. In addition, future research is proposed aimed at reducing information asymmetry, thereby leading to improved IT investment decisions and better management of technical debt.

To Grow or Not to Grow, That is SloPro

Jon Lund, a mechanical engineer with a hobby building mobile applications for the mobile device community on the new Apple App Store, had just hung up the phone with his brother-in-law after discussing what to do next. His company, started in his spare time, was now two companies with several different partnering relationships all bootstrapped from the early successes his apps had had in the marketplace.